Ben C Smith

Whoa, there.

The Bible cannot paint theists in general into a corner, since there are plenty of theists who (A) are not Christians at all, (B) are not Christians who accept the infallibility or inerrancy of the Bible, or (C) are not Christians who accept the infallibility or inerrancy of Jesus.

This kind of discrepancy corners only certain kinds of theists.

Ben.

DrewDiggler

Yes, you're correct. My mistake.

Ben C Smith

:thumbs:

arnoldo

Of course it would be appear to be odd behavior if you had no understanding of the Jewish context of the verse. Note the following source (page 131)

The Seven Festival of the Messiah by Edward Chumney

Toto

Re arnoldo's source:

The Seven Festivals of the Messiah by Edward Chumney (or via: amazon.co.uk)

An amazon reviewer has noted:

arnoldo's quote is from Chapter 7 - Rosh HaShanah. Find "bridegroom" and read about how Christianity is like an arranged marriage, where a brideprice is paid for the bride to her father, and the bride has not meet her bridegroom. The bridegroom then goes away and builds his bridal chamber and returns around midnight to (symbolically?) abduct the bride.

If Christians really want to impress non-believers, I think this is probably not a good analogy to bring up.

arnoldo

I couldn't care less about impressing non-believers.

GenesisNemesis

Then why are you on this forum? It's full of non-believers. Wouldn't you be more comfortable in a Christian forum? Yes, I know there are other Christians on this forum as well, but since you couldn't care less about impressing us... seems fishy. Isn't it the believer's job to save the sinners from damnation?

arnoldo

That still doesn't mean I have to "try" to impress anyone.

Toto

OK, let me rephrase that. If Christians want to be effective apologists and spread their faith, they should avoid an analogy between the church and a pre-modern bride in an arranged marriage.

Johnny Skeptic

If God tried harder to impress people, you would not have to try to impress people at all. Human effort alone could never do an adequate job of spreading the Gospel message. The proof is that millions of people died without hearing it. Obviously, speading the Gospel message is not one of God's priorities for himself, but for some odd reason, he wants spreading the Gospel message to be a priority for Christians. The same goes for the distribution of food. God wants giving enough food to hungry people to be a priority for Christians, but if Christians and everyone else are unable or unwilling to give enough food to hungry people, God is content to stand idly by and allow hungry people to die slow, painful deaths by starvation. No God would send his only begotten Son to suffer and die for mankind and act like that.